# A New Anthem By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2025-04-12 Francis Scott Key wrote the poem the Defense of For M’Henry in 1814. These lyrics would eventually become those of the national anthem of the United States, The Star-Spangled Banner. This song did not become the official anthem until 1931. It is difficult to imagine that we as a nation, or our Congress, could accomplish this today. What could a new anthem for the United States be? It is difficult to imagine, even as a thought experiment. Our current anthem focuses on a particular event from a long time ago. It amounts to a series of questions associated with a piece of fabric. “Oh say, can you see…?” Great, the flag is still there, and it's all good. For all its heroism and pride, the anthem says little about the state of the nation today. It doesn’t even give us much to harken back. For some, this song produces a profoundly emotional response. Some have performed it as an automaton since childhood. For some, it is a strange social ritual designed to perpetuate the ideology of the dominant class. It can be all these simultaneously. It can also be all of these for the same individual during a single performance. People and societies are complex. It isn’t that a new anthem is needed. It would probably be nearly impossible today to select one. And indeed, any anthem selected today would only be sung by half of those in attendance at any social function. For better or worse, the current anthem has the benefit of being from the past. A past that, for all its vaults and shortcomings, is generally accepted, at least tacitly and socially, as having legitimacy for informing what we do today. The fact that we probably couldn’t select a national anthem today is problematic. It reflects how fractured we are as a nation. In fact, in the absence of our current anthem, we probably wouldn’t have one. Perhaps that would be more fitting. #### Related Items [[American]] [[Music]] [[Patriotism]] [[Emotions]] [[Decision-making]] [[Society]]